5/12/2010 @ 6:00AM

Welcome To 'The Real World'--White House Edition

Last fall I called attention to the Obama White House’s little discussed but quite serious perspective problem and the political consequences of having a senior staff stacked with Democratic campaign hacks and liberal technocrats. This week, with their over-hyped and off-key “real world” sales pitch for Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, the president and his team are doing a bang-up job of outing their blind spots themselves. In the process they are providing an open window into why Obama continues to struggle in connecting with working class voters.

My issue isn’t with Kagan or with the White House’s decision to stress that she comes from outside the “judicial monastery.” Indeed, on first blush Kagan seems like an ideal choice for this time, this president and this Court, largely because of her somewhat nontraditional resume. With the loss of John Paul Stevens, Obama needs a skilled persuader, not a leftist firebrand or brilliant loner, to move the Court back toward the center. With the loss of Sandra Day O’Connor, the Court even more desperately needs someone with hands-on political experience and the distinct perspective that comes with it. Kagan appears exceptionally qualified to fill both voids.

But the White House was not content simply to trumpet those impressive and relevant credentials. Instead it has chosen to replay the Sotomayor empathy soundtrack and repackage the prototypical meritocrat Kagan as the next coming of Norma Rae–without noticing the obvious differences in the two nominees’ life stories. More important, it has failed to process the jarring irony of trying to pass off a classic insider with Kagan’s vita–Upper West Side childhood; lawyer and teacher for parents; Princeton undergrad, Harvard Law School; a career in government and academia–as a divining rod of the common man’s trials.

Vice President Joe Biden neatly summed up the White House line Tuesday morning on Good Morning America. “She is Main Street,” he said. “Both her parents were sons and a daughter of immigrants. … This is a woman who’s lived in the real world.” Really? Think most people in Kentucky or North Dakota or even Delaware would consider studying and working your whole life in elite schools, practicing law briefly at a high-priced white-shoe firm and holding top jobs in the Clinton and Obama administrations living in the “real world”?

The most revealing comment came from top Obama strategist David Axelrod. Speaking on Bloomberg TV, Axelrod, who himself has never held a job other than reporter and politico, boasted that Kagan “brings as broad an experience as you can hope for, in all three branches of government.” Yes, you read that right. In the narrow confines of Obamaland, working on Capitol Hill, in the White House and in the judiciary now apparently counts as the triple crown of life experience in this country.

Now, in a different context, you might write off a statement like that to standard operating spin–or if you were being generous, you might forgive Axelrod for leaving out the word “government” before “experience.” But when you listen to all the other hoot-inducing hyperbole coming out of the White House this week–and look at the exceedingly exclusive resumes of the folks doing the spinning–it’s hard not to take that line at red-faced value. Or to see it as of a piece with the many out-of-touch statements and gestures that all the president’s men and women have made over the past three years, starting with Obama’s infamous “Bitter-gate” incident during the campaign.

That does not mean this White House is fatally elitist, or as some hyperventilating conservatives suggest, contemptuous of the masses. The problem, as I originally argued last fall, is that the otherwise diverse Obama team is intellectually and culturally monochromatic. There are no recovering Bubbas or James Carville types who grew up in Sarah Palin’s version of the real America and who were acculturated to engage with and win over blue-collar workers. Nor are there policy mavericks like former Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey, or deal-cutters like former Louisiana Sen. John Breaux, who are programmed to think outside the box, reach beyond their circles–or at least tell the president the difference between Elena Kagan and Joe Sixpack.

I believe this lack of diversity has at times shaped the Obama administration’s policymaking decisions for the worse–and thus hurt its standing with the white, working-class voters who were wary of Obama from the beginning. But I think the most obvious and damaging impact, as we’ve seen with the Kagan case, has been on how the White House communicates and connects with the public. Too often they speak as if every voter is a member of the Sierra or Harvard clubs–and as if no one, other than rabid Republicans, questions whether the first black president with the funny name and trillion-dollar health care bill shares their values. As a result, they’ve too often exacerbated those suspicions instead of assuaged them.

One of the most vivid examples of this was the handling of the auto industry bailout. For the White House this was primarily an economic issue–and a political imperative. They had to take bold steps to forestall another huge shock to the system, as well as to prevent their labor allies from going on the warpath. But for most voters this was a values issue–GM and Chrysler were incompetent and deserved to go under. The White House made a strong policy case for this necessary evil, but it was much heavier on the necessary than the evil; in doing so, they failed to validate the widespread anger at this perceived injustice. Not surprisingly the auto industry takeover remains the single most unpopular Obama policy–even with the United Auto Workers’ blue-collar peers.

In fairness to the president and his team, they were under tremendous pressure in those early days. But this White House has been equally tone deaf in selling its agenda throughout the last 18 months–talking past the frustrated middle’s legitimate concerns on the stimulus bill, the health care bill and cap-and-trade, while writing off the Tea Party as a fringe movement. The only major exception to this pattern, where Team Obama has really spoken to people’s values over their diplomas, has been on financial reform. And lo and behold, look at the results: rapid progress, despite the long delay in addressing the issue, and rare signs of bipartisanship.

This critique is somewhat awkward for me to make. I am a meritocrat myself (which helps explain my affinity for Kagan). And one of Obama’s attributes that I value most is his habit of talking to voters like grown-ups. But in a sense that is what makes episodes like these so frustrating: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist, or even a hot shot political consultant, to know that the “real world” pitch for Kagan comes off about as fake and unconvincing as the eponymous MTV reality show. Yes, it’s great that she worked in the hurly-burly of politics, and there’s nothing wrong with saying so. But to suggest that is comparable to keeping a small business afloat or having your factory job shipped off to China is to suggest our president is the one living in the monastery.

I know that’s not the case. But at this point it’s up to the president to prove it’s not. If he truly wants to keep it real, and dispel the suspicions (far out and otherwise) that are undermining the public’s trust in him, he’s going to have to shake up his senior staff as well as the Supreme Court. We have a White House that looks like all of America. Now we need one that thinks like it too.

Dan Gerstein, a political communications consultant and commentator based in New York, is the founder and president of Gotham Ghostwriters. He formerly served as communications director to Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and as a senior advisor on his vice presidential and presidential campaigns. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.